Asger Dybvad Larsen

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Asger Dybvad Larsen takes up painting both as a medium and as an art historical object. He fundamentally questions the autonomy of painting and exposes the artist's work and process while letting works connect with each other, in order to create new contexts in a concrete and historical way. Over the past few years, Asger Dybvad Larsen has had his primary focus on painting, its art-historical ballast and an exploratory approach to the processing of the painting's traditional materials. In his production of works one finds clear references to iconic works of art history and contemporary currents. For instance, Asger Dybvad Larsen works with acrylic castings of paint trays on canvases of various size and shapes, and thereby creates a direct formalistic link to Frank Stella's striped geometric works and polygonal paintings. By using the painting tray as a picture, he also creates a connection to his own practice in the studio, where his process is based on a continuous production and destruction of works. It is an open process in which the works that he works on are constantly in flux; They are cut up and put together in new ways, they get applied material and then are disassembled and sewn together again. What characterizes Asger Dybvad Larsen's practice therefore becomes his production and process, where the individual work becomes a picture of the constant artistic exchange and development, rather than it becoming a work in itself. The studio thus functions as an archive, which Asger Dybvad Larsen can flip back and forth in and where he can separate, compose and construct new contexts based on detached works, processes and thoughts. He describes himself as; "... powerless archivist for the inward-looking family tree, whose branches he constantly breaks off as proof that the construction actually exists", and based on this conception, the individual works thus appear as snapshots of the artistic journey through the archive's times and places. Asger Dybvad Larsen relates dialectically to his works and to art history. The governing art-historical reference for his work is minimalism, in which he seeks to keep the subject out of the work. Through the work with simple forms and materials, a position is established where the viewer senses the work instead of consciously reading it. Minimalism produces a work that does not postulate to be anything other than what one sees. Form, structure and material constitute the object, which appears devoid of the expressive artist-self. It is the immediate physical experience that defines the reading of the work. This simplicity of expression and sensitivity in the senses characterize Asger Dybvad Larsen's expression. He produces physical works which, despite their restriction of the surface on which they work, appear sculptural and interact with the space in which they operate. The works resonate in the viewer's body and cause a sensation of the work that points beyond the material sum of the work that we, as spectators, are facing.